I mean, do they say “I sleep at 9pm” or more like “I sleep at 2100 hrs” even while they are talking informally? 2100 hrs sounds very formal to me, but yeah, I was just wondering if they used 24 hour format for only official and government proceedings and used 12 hour format for casual stuff.
Wait till you hear how Japan does things. If something closes at 1a or 2a, quite often the signage says 2500 or 2600 instead of 0100 or 0200 to denote that it’s a holdover from the previous day.
Wait, but then what time does it roll over into the new day at? Does it go 29:00 -> 06:00?
It’s not an “official” thing and usually rolls over based on the business.
So let’s say one business opens at 10a and closes at 4a every day, they’ll say 10:00-28:00
But let’s say a different company opens at 3a and closes at 10p, they’ll say 03:00-22:00
You’ll notice that there isn’t an “official” reset of time, it’s only used when a business carries over past midnight till whenever they close the next day. You don’t really find anything going past about 4a though.
When people talk they speak in the 12 hour clock, but written communication is in 24hr
It depends. You might say something like “I’ve got a meeting from 12 to 14”, which is perfectly natural. But also a lot of the time you might just say “I go to bed at 9” because the context makes it obvious that you mean 9 in the evening. Most people don’t go to bed in the morning. Unless you do, but then you would probably give context “I’m going to bed at 9 in the morning, because I work nights”, for example.
Instead of 9pm I would say 21 o’clock (or in German 21 Uhr), if it is obvious I’m talking about the evening, I might also say 9 o’clock (9 Uhr)
Depends. Some people will say “21 Uhr”, some people will say “9 Uhr”, one isn’t more formal than the other.
Of course with the 12h format you always need additional context to know if you mean in the moring or in the evening, since we don’t use “am/pm”.
I always prefer 24 uhr ;) format and usually set my devices to it, but I feel it is too formal to tell a friend, “hey, I will call you at 1700 hours”
24 uhr
That’s actually not a thing. It goes from 23:59 to 00:00
And when you’d say it it would be “23 Uhr 59” to “0 Uhr”.